Central SF Classic Lit

May 2012 Pick: One of Charles Dickens's most critically admired novels, this story of a monumental and life-consuming court case features one of his most vast and varied casts of colorful characters. In "Bleak House, " competing claims of love and inheritance--complicated by murder--have given rise to a costly and decades-long legal battle that one litigant refers to as "the family curse." The insidious London fog that rises from the river Thames and seeps into the very bones of the characters symbolizes the pervasive corruption of the legal system and the society that supports it, targets of Dickens's satirical wrath. Displaying Dickens's familiar panoramic sweep and brilliant characters--including the mysterious orphan Esther Summerson, her gentle guardian John Jarndyce, the haughty Lady Dedlock, and the scheming lawyer Mr. Tulkinghorn--the novel is also a bold experimental narrative that unforgettably dramatizes our most basic human conflicts.

November 2011 Pick: McEwan, Booker Prize-winning author of "Amsterdam, " has created a symphonic novel of love and war, childhood and class, guilt and forgiveness that provides all the satisfaction of a brilliant narrative combined with the provocation readers have come to expect from this master of English prose.

September 2011 Selection: The Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is now a movie directed by Hector Babenco ( Kiss of the Spider Woman) starring Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep. Nicholson plays Francis Phelan, ex-ballplayer, part-time gravedigger, full-time drunk, a man trying to make peace with the ghosts of his past and present. 8 pages of photos. Show Less